Jason Christensen
Cadet
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2016
- Messages
- 6
Hi All,
I am definitely a newbie to the world Freenas and so far it's been pretty positive...a few hickups on the way in the learning and setting up a system but comes with any new system with no experience!
So I had two spare PC's lying around not being used with a couple of USB drives and several free HDD's and I thought lets build a NAS (my first).
I started looking into Rockstor, Nas4Free and Freenas and some others, even installed Rockstor but decided on Freenas based on history/downloads etc.
First build...a pc from 2009 and not the best in the world back then...Asus M2N-MX, Sempron cpu with 2gig RAM.....(piece of s###t really)
Spent money on more RAM and maxed out the mobo at a mere 4gig...
Installed Freenas on an old IDE drive, loaded 2x 1 tb sata hdd's, added user, shares etc etc as you need to and this system rocked until I started moving files to test it's sturdiness.
Copied/moved approx 10gig (if that) of files and the system paniced...dam it!....did this over and over....researched hardware issues and Realtek chip seemed to be the blame (I think after lots reading and recommendations)!
OK learnt a hell of a lot from the first build...what not to do and what to do and what to look out for. Got my head around users, shares and permissions oh my!
Second build...a pc from 2013, was my old work horse, Asrock M3A770DE mobo, quad core 3.5mhz cpu and 8gig RAM. This is going to be my cheap dream NAS build.
Purchased 4x hotswap bays, 120gig SSD, PCIe 2x Sata expander card and finally an Intel Pro1000 PCI eithernet card....around NZ$400 of parts.
Installed all the new hardware except the new ethernet card, installed Freenas onto SSD, loaded 4x 1 tb sata hdd's, added user, shares etc etc as you need to.
Before I installed ethernet card I wanted to do a test to see if I could copy/move files without the new build from freezing...moved about 20gig of files and once again the system paniced....tested over and over and again and again just to check and it would at times it would freeze other times freeze, other times just lose LAN connection....it had not beaten me at this point as I had one more card to play....literally.
So installed the new Intel ethernet card, tinkered with Freenas settings, disabled onboard LAN in BIOS after some more reading (thanks Google) and tweaking Freenas was UP again...so I went into test mode again.
I then copied and moved the same files as before...and geeze the system was nothing like before...it did not panic, it did not freeze, it did not reboot....it's as stable as I could have hoped for and it shifted all files without error.
Testing over I copied all files onto the NAS for the family to access.
I'm using 1gig powerline adapters across the house networking the following...
1x Intel NUC (Linux Mint 18), 1x Asus Beebox (Win10 Home), 1x Apple Mac, 1x PC (Linux Mint 17.3) and my daily PC (Win10 Pro) all have access to my NAS....even my Android phone gets access.
My biggest recommendation (even as a newbie) is to do away with any onboard LAN device controlled Realtek and install a similar NZ$65 ethernet card.
So thanks to Freenas I did lots of reading, youtubing, tinkering and found a solution that works perfectly for me.
My system is great.
Jason.
PS...All done within 1 week!
I am definitely a newbie to the world Freenas and so far it's been pretty positive...a few hickups on the way in the learning and setting up a system but comes with any new system with no experience!
So I had two spare PC's lying around not being used with a couple of USB drives and several free HDD's and I thought lets build a NAS (my first).
I started looking into Rockstor, Nas4Free and Freenas and some others, even installed Rockstor but decided on Freenas based on history/downloads etc.
First build...a pc from 2009 and not the best in the world back then...Asus M2N-MX, Sempron cpu with 2gig RAM.....(piece of s###t really)
Spent money on more RAM and maxed out the mobo at a mere 4gig...
Installed Freenas on an old IDE drive, loaded 2x 1 tb sata hdd's, added user, shares etc etc as you need to and this system rocked until I started moving files to test it's sturdiness.
Copied/moved approx 10gig (if that) of files and the system paniced...dam it!....did this over and over....researched hardware issues and Realtek chip seemed to be the blame (I think after lots reading and recommendations)!
OK learnt a hell of a lot from the first build...what not to do and what to do and what to look out for. Got my head around users, shares and permissions oh my!
Second build...a pc from 2013, was my old work horse, Asrock M3A770DE mobo, quad core 3.5mhz cpu and 8gig RAM. This is going to be my cheap dream NAS build.
Purchased 4x hotswap bays, 120gig SSD, PCIe 2x Sata expander card and finally an Intel Pro1000 PCI eithernet card....around NZ$400 of parts.
Installed all the new hardware except the new ethernet card, installed Freenas onto SSD, loaded 4x 1 tb sata hdd's, added user, shares etc etc as you need to.
Before I installed ethernet card I wanted to do a test to see if I could copy/move files without the new build from freezing...moved about 20gig of files and once again the system paniced....tested over and over and again and again just to check and it would at times it would freeze other times freeze, other times just lose LAN connection....it had not beaten me at this point as I had one more card to play....literally.
So installed the new Intel ethernet card, tinkered with Freenas settings, disabled onboard LAN in BIOS after some more reading (thanks Google) and tweaking Freenas was UP again...so I went into test mode again.
I then copied and moved the same files as before...and geeze the system was nothing like before...it did not panic, it did not freeze, it did not reboot....it's as stable as I could have hoped for and it shifted all files without error.
Testing over I copied all files onto the NAS for the family to access.
I'm using 1gig powerline adapters across the house networking the following...
1x Intel NUC (Linux Mint 18), 1x Asus Beebox (Win10 Home), 1x Apple Mac, 1x PC (Linux Mint 17.3) and my daily PC (Win10 Pro) all have access to my NAS....even my Android phone gets access.
My biggest recommendation (even as a newbie) is to do away with any onboard LAN device controlled Realtek and install a similar NZ$65 ethernet card.
So thanks to Freenas I did lots of reading, youtubing, tinkering and found a solution that works perfectly for me.
My system is great.
Jason.
PS...All done within 1 week!
